Alan Beaman is the closest to freedom he’s been since 1995, when a downstate jury found him guilty of strangling and stabbing Jennifer Lockmiller, his 22-year-old on-again off-again girlfriend.

Aaron Chambers and Corina Curry

Alan Beaman is the closest to freedom he’s been since 1995, when a downstate jury found him guilty of strangling and stabbing Jennifer Lockmiller, his 22-year-old on-again off-again girlfriend.

After the Illinois Supreme Court reversed Beaman’s murder conviction today and sent his case back to a trial court, his attorneys prepared to argue for his release.

“We’re going to seek his release, definitely,” said Karen Daniel, one of his attorneys.

Rockford attorney Bill Beu, who represented Beaman at trial in 1995, said he was “overjoyed” by the news.

“It’s about time,” he said.

“Praise Jesus on this,” said Carol Beaman, Alan Beaman’s mother, who has spent the past 13 years, along with her husband, Barry, trying to convince the state of their son’s innocence.

McLean County State’s Attorney William Yoder, whose office prosecuted Beaman, responded with a statement saying he was “saddened for the family of Jennifer Lockmiller.”

“Pending further action in this matter, the defendant is entitled to request the trial court to set an appropriate bond (for his release),” he said.

James Souk, who was lead prosecutor on Beaman’s case, declined to comment. Souk is now a McLean County judge.

The Supreme Court’s seven justices unanimously concluded prosecutors violated Beaman’s “constitutional right to due process of law” by failing to disclose certain evidence that might have been favorable to Beaman’s defense.

In an opinion by Justice Thomas Kilbride, the court said evidence against Beaman was “not particularly strong.”

“We cannot have confidence in the verdict finding (Beaman) guilty of this crime given the tenuous nature of the circumstantial evidence against him, along with the nondisclosure of critical evidence that would have countered the state’s argument that all other potential suspects had been eliminated from consideration,” Kilbride wrote.

Beaman long has maintained his innocence in the 1993 murder, claiming he couldn’t have been at Lockmiller’s apartment near the Illinois State University campus in Normal at the time the state says he was there.

To bolster his claim of innocence, Beaman has suggested that another of Lockmiller’s boyfriends, identified by the court as John Doe, might have been responsible for the murder.

Kilbride said prosecutors conceded they “withheld” evidence on four points:

John Doe failed to complete a polygraph examination;

John Doe was charged with domestic battery and drug charges before Beaman’s trial;

John Doe physically abused his girlfriend on numerous occasions; and

John Doe’s use of steroids had caused him to act erratically.

That evidence was “clearly favorable to (Beaman) in establishing (John) Doe as an alternative suspect,” Kilbride wrote.